James Ford Rhodes (18481927). History of the Civil War, 18611865 1917.

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that the North should fail. It seemed more favorable to Englands power and trade that the United States should be divided into two nations, especially as the Southern Confederacy would offer England practically free trade, hence a large market for her manufactured goods that would be paid for in raw cotton. The wish was father to the thought and the inference to be drawn from Bull Run settled the matter. The nobility and upper middle class came to the conclusion that the North could not conquer the South and that separation would be the result. This opinion was advocated by the Times and Saturday Review with a power of sarcastic statement that stung their Northern readers to the quick. Help us to a breath of generous strengthening sympathy from old England was Sumners appeal to William H. Russell. Do not forget, I pray you, was Russells reply, that in reality it is Brightism and republicanism at home which the conservative papers mean to smite. America is the shield under which the blow is dealt.1

The exponents of the ten-pounders, who, in their smug complacency, believed their Constitution and government to be not only now the best on earth but the best that had ever existed,2 criticised the North freely in a tone of flippant and contemptuous serenity,3 highly irritating to a people engaged in a life-and-death struggle. The sneers at the panic and cowardice of Northern troops at Bull Run, as the common measure of a people fighting their countrymen to suppress their desire for independence, were hard to bear. Edward Dicey when in America argued with James Russell Lowell about what seemed to him an unreasonable animosity toward England. It is possible, Lowell replied, that my feelings may be morbidly exaggerated, but, pointing